


Binding the Wind

by Killtheselights, TheLadyoftheHouse



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Compliant, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Fluff, Force Bond (Star Wars), Friendship, Hair Braiding, In which once again we injured Kylo Ren, Jakku, Oneshot, Post-TLJ, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, binding spells
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 04:38:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15811542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Killtheselights/pseuds/Killtheselights, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLadyoftheHouse/pseuds/TheLadyoftheHouse
Summary: The Force didn't stop connecting Ben and Rey after the Battle of Crait. Now they've become unlikely friends, and when Supreme Leader Kylo Ren is faced with dangers from within the First Order, Rey becomes his surprise protector.





	Binding the Wind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MissHarper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissHarper/gifts).



> This is a little one-shot we made out of some cut moments from the drafts of our other fics. Thank you, MissHarper, for being our friend and cheerleader.  
> All our love.

Rey had just started pulling back her hair when she felt the air in the room shift. She didn’t even need to turn around anymore. She felt his presence in the Force in the same way one might pick out a familiar song playing in a crowded room.

“Back so soon?” she asked pleasantly.

“Couldn’t keep away if I tried,” he said. “And you know I've tried.”

Rey turned around and beamed, but her smile quickly faded when she looked at Ben. Kylo. Whatever he called himself these days, she couldn’t help but get a sickly feeling in her stomach when she saw him.

“What?” He sat up taller from where he was perched on her bed. “What’s wrong?”

She knew she couldn’t lie. He could feel it somehow. He always knew.

“You shocked me, is all,” she muttered. “I wasn’t expecting…”

He crossed his arms. She hadn’t lied, but she hadn’t deflected well, either. She tried a more clumsy tactic.

“How was your day?” She strode over to the corner of the room to appear preoccupied with getting herself ready for her own morning. She didn’t know where she appeared to be in the room at the other side of their connection, but she hoped she seemed nonchalant.

“I look awful, don’t I?” he asked, looking critically at her. Rey wasn’t the kind to make superficial comments about his appearance. Something about growing up in the wilds of Jakku made her less concerned about little things like that, but she couldn’t hide her gentle concern for him.

“I didn’t say that,” she said after a pause.

“No, you wouldn’t, which is the problem." He chuckled.

“Well, should I?” She turned back and approached him.

“You can be truthful with me, yes,” he said, tilting his chin up proudly. “I can take it.”

“Good, because one look at you tells me you haven’t been sleeping well.”

“How did you figure that?” He leaned back casually in his chair and putting his hands up behind his head. “Don’t you think I’m the most handsome Supreme Leader in the galaxy?”

Rey rolled her eyes.

“No, Snoke was far more alluring. And your tunic is on backwards,” she said with a laugh. “I guess none of your officers were bold enough to say anything?”

He groaned, leaning forward and burying his face in the heels of his hands.

“Don’t get me started on my officers,” he muttered.

Rey took a seat next to him on her bed.

“That bad, huh?” She cocked her head.

She didn’t know what to make of her friendship with the Supreme Leader. After their last face-to-face encounter on the Supremacy, she had assumed the Force would stop connecting them, since Snoke, the creator of their connection, was now blessedly deceased. And she had been grateful to have it severed. But it hadn’t stopped. And they had learned to live with each other, after a time.

After she had thrown several of her potted plants at his head, only to have them pass through him, anyway.

And once her ire had waned and she had grown to accept his unwelcome presence, they had entered a strange routine. Whenever she was alone long enough, he would appear. And they would vent their frustrations to the other, talk casually about their days. If she was feeling generous, she’d even allow him to coach her in uses of the Force. His company was pleasant, and after a while, she almost found herself looking forward to his appearances.

She was his only friend. From the stories she told him about her antics around the secret Resistance bases that he could never see, he knew the situation wasn’t reciprocated. Regardless, he didn’t have the heart or spine to tell her how much he looked forward to seeing her, even if they only teased each other. But she made him feel comfortable. Safe.

He needed that today.

“Not as bad as a backwards tunic,” he said with half-hearted mirth, finally rising to his feet.

“Yes, do fix your tunic,” Rey said drolly. “It’s embarrassing for both of us that we are conversing across the galaxy and you can’t even bother to dress for the occasion.”

“Would you prefer I take it off, then?” They had connected in states of undress before, but because Rey often had to use communal showers, she had been spared any truly mortifying encounters with her Force-wielding counterpart. She had grown accustomed to the sight of him shirtless to the point it no longer shocked her. It was still rather tantalizing, though she refused to admit that to even herself.

It was her turn to roll her eyes. “If it makes you more comfortable, certainly.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to cause you any discomfort,” he said innocently.

“On or off, Solo, your choice,” she said flatly. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

He stood, unlatched his belt, and slid his tunic over his head."

“You know that I don’t _want_ to speak with you in various states of undress. I feel like that might have been a slight on my character." He folded the tunic carefully.

“Ah yes, your spotless character,” she said. “How dare I question the moral fiber of Kylo Ren, Jedi Killer.”

He peeled his gloves off one at a time. “Really, these accusations are hurtful.” He lobbed her dry sarcasm back at her. “Though I must say, you have gotten kinder since our first conversations. You haven’t called me a snake in...oh, months now.”

He carefully pulled his arms out of his arm guards, discarding them. Rey tried to turn her head respectfully, but a flash of red caught her eye.

“Kriff, Ben, what is that?” she asked, a little more shocked than she had intended.

He looked at the burn on his arm.

“Oh, right. My officers.”

Rey gaped. “What happened?”

“I don’t know whether they are literally or figuratively trying to kill me, but either way, my slow and painful death seems to be their end game."

Rey approached him closely, more carefully. “What do you mean?”

“Well, for one, they’re pretty irritating, and that alone is enough to kill me,” he said with a sigh. “But earlier, one was leading me on a tour of a facility. I was inspecting a munitions bay, and when my attention was elsewhere, there was an explosion. Faulty thermal detonators, he said. A few Stormtroopers were treated for shrapnel injuries. I don’t think any died. Never followed up.”

Rey couldn’t disguise her concern, and she glanced at the burn on his forearm. “Were you...?”

“I’m fine,” he said, his voice soft, reassuring. “It’s nothing. I’m tough to get rid of, you should know that.”

He moved to the closet to grab an undershirt. Rey appreciatively eyed the muscles in his back before he covered his torso once more. He turned and regarded her severely.

“But...would you think I’m insane if I said that I believe the explosion was on purpose?”

She stared at her hands. “Not if you have good reason. And I can’t imagine you would jump to this conclusion lightly.”

He shifted nervously, and then took a seat beside her again.

“There have been other...incidents. Blasters misfiring. Massive engine failures in launch bays. A few weeks ago a command shuttle I was on…” He stopped, shaking the memory out of his head. “Look, either my officers are just incompetent, and I mean each one of them in an entirely unique way, or...Rey, I think they’re trying to kill me.”

Her stomach soured. She knew she shouldn’t feel protective of her arch-rival, but she didn’t see him like that. Not anymore. Not when he had been sitting in her various bedrooms for months, correcting her saber forms, talking her through some of the more awkward elements of living on a base, coaxing out her abilities with a soft but firm tone. Comforting her through lonely moments when she felt like the only person in the universe. Making her laugh with his hard-headedness, a twin to her own. Now he was her friend, and he was scared.

Carefully, she reached across his lap, hands hovering.

“May I?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

She took his left arm in her hands. She never failed to feel surprised by the sensation of touching him in the Force, real and warm and pulsing with energy she had felt so rarely since Ahch-To. Turning his wrist over, she examined the wound carefully. It had been cleaned, but she could see the jagged redness around the outside of the burn; she had experienced several similar injuries that, if she had left them untreated,would have become infected.

“You should put some balm on it, cover it for the night,” she said. “But above all, you need to get some rest.”

“Do you think I’m crazy?” he asked, his deep voice strangely soft.

“Usually? Yes. But not in this.” She could feel the nerves coiling in her gut; she couldn’t tell if it was caused by his fear or hers, but through their contact, the anxiety was a common sensation.

“If these things keep happening, you’ll need to be alert, so you should get to sleep,” she said authoritatively, but then her tone softened.

“You don’t have to be afraid.”  
  
They sat awkwardly for a moment, his eyes never leaving her hand on him. An idea occurred to Rey.

“Would you let me...try something?”

He sat up suddenly. “This sounds dangerous,” he said.  
  
She smiled. “Very. But it will be fun.”

“Fun for whom?”  
  
“You’ll see. Just...lie down."

He turned sideways, lowering himself carefully down. He draped himself across the soft lounge in the corner of his chambers so he was lying beside Rey.

“Head up,” she said gently, scooting closer. Her cheeks flushed faintly.

He obeyed silently as she maneuvered her thighs under his neck, letting him rest his head back on her lap. Ben relaxed with a quiet sigh, his eyes slipping closed; he hadn’t felt this comfortable in years. The sting of his burn melted into the background and his hard muscles unclenched after hours of tension. There was a pull with Rey that seemed to erase some of the daily strain from his bones. He wished he could tell her this, but didn’t dare.

With soft fingers, she gathered his hair out from under his head, smoothing the long black curls back from his face to spill over her legs.

“Comfortable?” she murmured.

He hummed his assent.

“And to what do I owe this luxury?” he mumbled, cracking an eye open to peer up at her as she combed her fingers gently through waves of silken ink.

“Hush,” she murmured. She nudged his head so that he faced her feet. “Now don’t move.”

She was silent for several long moments, nothing but the constant inaudible hum of the ship passing between them. He closed his eyes again, the events of the day weighing heavy and weary on his chest. He could feel her tugging gently on his hair, carding her fingers through lock after lock until every strand lay smooth and untangled in her hands.

After a few minutes of tugging, he ventured some brief conversation. “What are you…”

“No talking,” she tutted softly, a small smile in her voice. They fell back into a comfortable silence as her gentle, secret ministrations soothed him further into the unfamiliar sense of relaxation.

On Jakku, sandstorms were a frequent and terrifying threat. The Teedos had called the storms _X'us'R'iia_ _,_ believing that the howling winds and stinging sands was the breath of their cruel and vindictive goddess. Rey had never put much stock in the religion of the little lizard folk, but their ways had ingrained some distinctive idiosyncrasies into her over the years. After one particularly destructive episode had nearly decimated Niima Outpost, a young Rey had noticed a number of Teedos wearing strangely knotted wrappings looped around themselves as they sifted through the wreckage for scrap. It had taken copious amounts of cajoling and flattery to coax an explanation of the knots out of them.

“To hold the Breath!” Teedo had croaked. “Stupid girl.”

“Knot the Breath into the cord so that this--” Teedo gestured widely at the destruction around them. “--doesn’t get worse. Protection.”

Though little Rey was unwilling to fully commit to the idea of the Teedos’ religion, she was terrified by the all-encompassing darkness and burning sand from the days before, and had taken the ritual to heart. She practiced on whatever cord-like object she could find during her days; rubber-coated wires from the guts of defunct pilot consoles, durasteel cables thick with rust that coated her fingers in red dust and blisters, even thin strips of jerky at meal times.

She kept her trial runs secret; she didn’t want the Teedos to laugh at her, the foolish little nonbeliever who sneered at R’iia’s power but still tried to stop her with weak knots and pretenders’ prayers.

And so, as the next _X'us'R'iia_ howled outside her AT-AT, she hunkered down and tried to make knots to bind the wind. Her wraps were the first things she had tried her hand at, but she needed them for her work and untying them was a chore that she had no patience for. Besides, nothing happened as she twisted and tangled the strips of gauzy fabric. The wind didn’t stop blowing, if anything the sand hissed louder against the corroding metal of her capsized home. She couldn’t use her ropes either, lest they tangle irrevocably. She knotted for hours until her fingers cramped, but still the storm raged outside.

Frustrated, she had dug her hands into her hair, long and sand-tangled from the early gusts that had caught her as she battened down the hatches of her shelter, tearing her hair out of her customary three buns. She had combed through the snarls, twisting locks around her fingers and tugging strands down in front of her face to stare cross-eyed at them. Then an idea occurred to her: maybe the knots didn’t work because she was a nonbeliever. Maybe she needed to find her own way to protect herself from the storm.

Absently, almost trance-like, she began to braid her hair. As each cluster of hairs crossed over the other, she had imagined that the wind had gotten caught in each individual strand. She was trapping the foul breath of an angry goddess in each plait, lock by lock. By the time she had reached the bottom of the braid, the wind outside had quieted a bit.

The little girl had emerged from the AT-AT later that afternoon with a head full of swinging, sandy braids and a triumphant grin.

Ever since, Rey snuck a braid into her hair whenever a storm hit, or when she felt the need for a little extra protection.

Gazing down at Ben’s head in her lap, his throat bared trustingly and his scarred face more relaxed than she’d ever seen him, she felt an undeniable need to protect him, too.

So she braided his hair. Just a small one, something hidden but noticeable only to the wearer. A silent spell to bind the sour wind of mutiny in knots. A secret to keep him safe when she wasn’t there.

She deftly finished off her work, looping a few strands around the end to secure it.

It was another minute before she brought his hand back up to his head. He had felt his mind drifting into a calm place as he let her presence envelop him.

“There,” she said quietly.

Underneath his fingers, he felt at the oddly uniform tangle. He let the tip of his index finger trace the strangely knotted hair, and he pinched it with his thumb. He lifted his head slightly so he could see it in the faint light.

A plait ran from the front of his hairline to behind his ear, tight to his scalp over the upper shell of his ear then separating from his head to hang down with the rest of his hair.

His gaze wandered up to her face, looking gently down at his. He traced her lips, full and pink in the dull glow of the machinery in his chambers.

“A braid?” he asked quietly.  
  
“For protection,” she said, color flooding her cheeks. “It’s...it’s an old tradition. From Jakku. I..I learned it when I was young. To protect me from sandstorms. And it’ll protect you from...other winds.”  
  
He swallowed, gratitude and something else he couldn’t quite name constricting his throat.  
  
“You do believe me.”

She took his hand in hers, running her thumb over the scars thickening his knuckles.

“Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I believe you?”

He smiled weakly. “I’m not exactly seen as trustworthy. I don’t know if you’ve heard.”

She chirped a little laugh and let go of his hand with a firm squeeze, her fingers returning to their absent combing through his loose hair.  
  
“What!” she cried in mock horror. “The Supreme Leader? Untrustworthy?” She gasped dramatically. “You can’t mean it!”

“A travesty, I know,” he said, adopting a similar air of melodrama. “The Supreme Leader-- long may he reign -- can’t be believed when an attempt or several are made on his life.”

She peered down at him with a dismayed shake of her head. “Really, this all could have been avoided if you’d just joined the Light side. Honestly, it’s rather lovely over here. Sunshine, rainbows, loth-cat kittens. You’re missing out, Ben.”

He wrinkled his nose in displeasure.

"You're torturing me now," he grumbled.

“Well you are a bit of a captive audience,” she said coyly. “And you know I can take whatever I want.”

There it was again. The line that would forever haunt him, when he was power-drunk and obsessed with finding Skywalker. Even though they had made amends -- as best as one could with a person on the opposite side of the war -- she never let him forget his beastlier behaviors. He didn’t know if it was her way of flirting or keeping him humble. Maybe she used it as another method of torture for him, one she took unbridled pleasure in. Regardless, he groaned.

“You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?” he muttered.  
  
She laughed deeply and haughtily, jostling his head on her lap. “Not a chance.”

He rolled his eyes.

"You monster," he groaned, sinking his head back onto her thigh.

“Now, now, is that any way to talk to your best friend in the galaxy?” she quipped.

He pointed a finger at her, preparing to unleash a stern rebuttal at her, but he lowered his hand when none came.

“You know I hate when you’re right?”

“Oh yes,” she said brightly. “And I figure you have to detest me by now, because I am right rather often.”

“And despite all that, fool that I am, I still let the Force connect us.”

She swatted at his shoulder.

“Don’t act like you’re the only one in control of that. Now get ready for bed. If you don’t get some rest soon, I won’t tell you the next time I catch you with a backwards tunic.”

He threw his hands up in the air like a prisoner awaiting binders to be slapped on his wrist.

"Please, please, not that, anything but that," he said monotonously. "I'll do anything you ask."

She caught his hands out of the air and rested them over his heart.

“Then close your eyes and get some rest,” she whispered with a smirk. “You’ll see me tomorrow.”

His mouth slowly twisted into a smile, groggier this time.

“It’s a date."

Hesitating, she leaned forward and softly brushed his lips with hers, closing her eyes to savor his warmth, the gentleness of his mouth on hers, the metallic scent of him.

He closed his eyes, sinking into the sweetness of her, a tenderness that enveloped him as he felt her soft lips on his. When he opened his eyes again, he was alone in his chambers. A pleasant hum in the Force was all that that remained of her. His best friend. He sat up, his fingers reaching instantly for the plait behind his ear. Protection. More than that. Comfort. He tugged it and smiled, reluctant to sleep and lose the sensations of her, but eager for the dreams that would come in her wake.

When she pulled away, he was gone, the weight of his head on her lap a phantom sensation.

She looked at the sun peeking in through her window.

 _Tomorrow_ , she thought with a secret smile.

She hoped she was telling the truth. She sent a silent prayer to a faraway goddess to keep him safe until then.


End file.
